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Overview

When her best guy friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, sixteen-year-old Cat sets out to discover who in her small town did it. Richly atmospheric, this daring mystery mines the secrets of a tightly knit Southern community and examines the strength of will it takes to go against everyone you know in the name of justice.

Against a backdrop of poverty, clannishness, drugs, and intolerance, Myracle has crafted a harrowing coming-of-age tale couched in a deeply intelligent mystery. Smart, fearless, and compassionate, this is an unforgettable work from a beloved author.

Praise for Shine

“Cat eventually uncovers the truth in a cliffhanging climax in which she confronts fear, discovers that love is stronger than hate and truly ‘shines.’ Raw, realistic and compelling.”

–Kirkus Reviews

“The page-turning mystery and Cat’s inspiring trajectory of self-realization will draw readers in and give them plenty to ponder.”

–The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

“Dramatic in both content and presentation."

–Los Angeles Times

“Myracle captures well the regret that many feel for things in their past about which they are ashamed. Cat’s reflections on these moments are spot-on.”

Product Details

About the Author

Lauren Myracle is the New York Times bestselling author of the Internet Girls trilogy—ttyl, ttfn, and l8r, g8r—as well as Rhymes with Witches, Bliss, and the new Flower Powerseries, among many other books for teens and young adults. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her family. Visit her online at www.laurenmyracle.com.

Editorial Reviews

Cat has been distant from childhood best friend Patrick for three years (she began to "ignore the whole world" after an older friend of her brother's molested her). Even so, when a horrific and possible hate crime leaves openly gay Patrick comatose, she decides to "look straight into the ugliness and find out who hurt him." She grows suspicious of her brother's friends, "the redneck posse," who were with Patrick the night of his attack—especially as she learns they are keeping dangerous secrets, including dealing and using meth. Myracle (Bliss) paints the desperate poverty and bitter divisions within Cat's mountain community well, with memorable details like a friend coloring the duct tape patches on her couch to match the fabric or a meth cooker's bathtub filled with funnels and coffee filters. These details and the thick mystery that Cat unfurls will keep readers engaged—and suspecting several characters, as Cat does. The final faceoff strains believability and the conclusion is a tad neat, but readers will find themselves thinking about Cat's complicated rural community long after the mystery has been solved. Ages 14–up. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Gr 10 Up—Cat, 16, has isolated herself over the past three years, retreating from her friends and life after being violated by a boy she knew. But after a gay-bashing incident involving her former best friend at the local convenience store where he works leaves him in a coma, she is determined to enter the world again and investigate the crime to make up for all the years she abandoned him. The sheriff suspects his attackers are most likely out-of-towners angry with Patrick because he refused to sell them alcohol. Cat assumes the perpetrators are closer to home since the "redneck posse" that Patrick hung around with never fully accepted him and must know something since they partied with him earlier in the night. In a week's time, Cat pays visits to her old friends and slowly learns about the hidden relationships in the meth-addled underbelly of her hill-country Southern town. Most of the teens in this novel have either dropped out of high school, come from broken families, or been abused. It's a bleak story leavened a little by the things Cat learns about herself in the course of her investigation. Myracle captures well the regret that many feel for things in their past about which they are ashamed. Cat's reflections on these moments are spot-on.—Shawna Sherman, Hayward Public Library, CA

School Library Journal

When her gay best friend is brutally beaten in contemporary Black Creek, N.C., a withdrawn teen tracks his assailant. Different from other kids in their ignorant, poverty-stricken, backwoods community, 16-year-old Cat and 17-year-old Patrick have been "kindred spirits" since childhood. Growing up with a drunken father, a well-meaning aunt and an older brother she no longer trusts, Cat was "full of light and life" until one of her brother's "gay-bashing redneck" friends "messed" with her. For three years, Cat has blinded herself to everyone, including Patrick, convinced her "entire existence meant nothing." But when Patrick's beaten and left for dead at the convenience store where he works, a gasoline nozzle protruding from his mouth, an angry, guilt-ridden Cat knows she must open her eyes and "look straight into the ugliness and find out who hurt him." Cat describes her relentless, determined investigation in the first person, proceeding day by day over a period of two and a half weeks, allowing readers to gradually absorb the complex, twisted relationships, shocking evidence, disturbing memories and gritty atmosphere. Motivated to solve the horrific hate crime, Cat eventually uncovers the truth in a cliffhanging climax in which she confronts fear, discovers that love is stronger than hate and truly "shines." Raw, realistic and compelling. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews

Having been raised in the rural South, I confess to chucking aside many a book larded with stereotypical miscreants and sugared with "honey, chile" blandishments. But praise be, author Lauren Myracle moves beyond Old Dixie cliches to deliver her finest novel yet, a sensitive portrayal of a contemporary small town bound to silence by old secrets and loyalties.The Washington Post

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Great weekend read, great plot, great characters. Finished it in a few hours time

avid-older-reader

More than 1 year ago

I have followed Myracle's career since the beginning to try to understand what my daughters and older grandchildren were so excited about, so I picked up Shine thinking I knew what was coming. I didn't. This book isn't Winnie or Zoe or Mad Maddie. Nor is it Vicks or Jessie. Myracle's readers will know to whom I refer. Those of you who aren't can read Shine without being misdirected by prior knowledge of Myracle's sunny prose and "all's well that ends well" philosophy.
Shine is gritty--sometimes raw and always intense. It drags prejudices and human frailty into the spotlight for close examination, dealing with subjects that aren't sunny, such as homophobia and drug use, poverty and isolation. It is not like anything Myracle has ever written before, but like her prior stories, it is well-crafted and entertaining. Shine belongs in the adult section. I think it is her best work.

epicrat

More than 1 year ago

Let me preface this review with a disclaimer: This is my first Lauren Myracle book, but if this is what I can expect from her, then I may just bring myself to reading her other works although I think I may pass on the Internet Girls series.
Shine is a remarkable read that is sure to be timeless. I am in awe of Lauren Myracle for tackling such a emotionally-charged topic and doing so with great care, respect, and brutal honesty. I don't think I have read anything quite like it. At a time where the paranormal genre runs rampant with angels and unicorns and werewolves, I strongly urge everyone to take a breather and check out Shine. It is definitely worth your while!
There are so many things to digest after reading Shine that I hardly know where to start. Cat makes for a perfect narrator who has to brace herself against the "small town = small minds" of Black Creek in order to find who had left her best friend for dead. Additionally, Cat has to reconcile with her own demons in the form of an older brother who disappointed her at the most critical moment of her life and a classmate who has wronged her in the most unforgivable way. As she digs deeper into the truth, she discovers that the small town has been infiltrated by meth - and among its users are some of her classmates.
The ending of Shine will be sure to grip you in an unexpected manner, and it will force you to take a step back and see everyone involved in a new light. Even villains can have a heart. Even villains can redeem themselves. Then again, even villains can remain villains, no matter how you try hard to save them.
Gritty, dark, disturbingly and sadly real, Shine comes at the right time in our lives where society is still hesitant about homosexuality. This is what happens, and this is what has to stop happening! I love that Shine addresses hate crime, but at the same time I am sad that it has to.
Do yourselves a favor. Go and read Shine.
Then spread the love. Stop the hate.

OtotheD

More than 1 year ago

Lauren Myracle's Shine starts off with a bang. The first few pages are of a newspaper article focusing on the brutal beating of Patrick, a gay high school student. After reading the "article" I couldn't help but be taken back several years to the headlines surrounding the beating of Matthew Shepard, and I immediately found myself drawn into the story.
Sixteen-year-old Cat used to be best friends with Patrick. One day, three years ago, Cat withdrew from her friends after an unfortunate run-in with one of her brothers friends. Now that Patrick is lying in a coma, Cat decides she needs to do the right thing, and feels she owes it to Patrick to find out who did this to him.
Patrick & Cat live in a very small town in the mountains of North Carolina. The people are poor, white trash, "clannish", some of them drug dealers and meth heads, and most of them quite backwards in their ways of thinking. The local sheriff doesn't want to believe that someone from the town would do this, but Cat thinks differently. During her investigation into what happened, Cat is forced to reconnect with old friends (and enemies) to find out who would do such a thing to Patrick, and most importantly, find out why.
The author paints each character with depth and precision. Having grown up in a small town, very similar to Black Creek, it wasn't hard for me to buy into the characters or the situations presented in the novel at all. This book kept me up late as I raced to finish it, and left me thinking about it long afterward. The copy I read was an advance copy from NetGalley, but I will definitely be going out to buy the hardcover version as soon as it is released. This one deserves a spot on my shelf.

ReaderOfThePack

More than 1 year ago

Shine, by Lauren Myracle, portrays the residents of a small North Carolina town in the aftermath of a vicious crime. The narrator is 16-year-old Cat, who is on a mission to find her former best friend's assailant. Cat's former friend, Patrick, is openly gay and spends the duration of the novel in a coma, the apparent victim of a hate crime. The reader finds out early on that a traumatic event occurred three years prior that caused Cat to drop her friends and withdraw, but the details of the event are not divulged until later in the novel. Despite the distance between the two friends, Cat feels she owes it to Patrick to figure out who hurt him. She is not confident the police will investigate local suspects because they are judgmental of Patrick's sexuality. As Cat opens up to old and new friends while searching for Patrick's assailant, her wounds begin to heal. Shine includes some pretty heavy material: homophobia, abuse, drug addiction and prejudices. Despite the heavy subject matter, the reader is left with a sense of hope. Hope that sometimes people say things that they don't truly mean and hope that sometimes people do change for the better. Lauren Myracle is very popular for her Internet Girls series. I hope that her popularity helps get this book into the hands of young adults whose minds might be changed for the better after reading Shine.
Disclosure: I received a free e-galley of Shine from the publisher, Abrams Books.

Maranna

More than 1 year ago

At the Come and Go Gas Station in North Carolina, Patrick is attacked for being homosexual. Nobody knows who did, and Patrick can&rsquo;t tell them because he is in a coma. Cat, his former friend, sets out to find the attacker. She suspects Tommy, Patrick&rsquo;s friend, but he denies it. She talks to many people who talked to Patrick that night. All the evidence leads to Patrick having a boyfriend. The question is, who? When the attacker starts to threaten Cat, she wants to find him/her even more. Can she? Read the book to find out what Cat will go to so she can bring justice to Patrick.
I would recommend this book to people who love thrilling mysteries. First, there is a mystery of Patrick&rsquo;s attacker. Next, who is Patrick&rsquo;s boyfriend? Lastly, what the attacker will do to Cat is unknown. I loved this book, and I think you will too!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

This book was a little different than I thought. I thought it would be more about Patrick, her gay friend, but it got into her own story a little more which was good too. I read it really quick and didn't want to put it down.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

READ THIS BOOK!!!

ScottGallagher

More than 1 year ago

This is the first book I've read by Lauren Myracle and I enjoyed it immensely. This writer can really tell a good story. The main character is Cat, a 16 year old girl who has grown up in a small southern town that is seemingly closed off from the rest of the world. Cat has had a somewhat utopian childhood, hanging out with her best friend, Patrick, and the grandmother who raised him, Mama Sweetie. Everything Cat thinks she will ever want or need is right here in Black Creek, North Carolina in the bosom of Patrick and Mama Sweetie. But Myracle quickly juxtaposes this innocent, almost too sweet, existance with the harsh reality of smalltown life stricken with poverty and drug addiction.
On the surace this is a mystery. Patrick, who is gay, has become the victim of a hate crime. He was brutally beaten, tied to a guard rail of the gas pumps at the station where he works, and left for dead. While Patrick languishes in acomma, Cat decides to take it upon herself to find out who in her small town committed this crime. She knows the local power structure is doing whatever it takes to appear to be solving the crime as they sweep it under the rug. The thing is, Patrick is not hated, but is actually well liked in Black Creek. He is a good kid who works hard, does good in school, and even goes to church. Though it is noticed by Cat that people who seem to like Patrick do blame his being different on the attack. Often wondering what he may have done to bring this attack on himself.
As Cat gets deeper into the mystery, this becomes a story about much more than a hate crime. It turns out that Cat has not been close to or spent any time with Patrick for about two years, having closed herslf off from the rest of the world after experiencing a secret tramatic event herself. And Cat learns of the prevelence of Meth use and selling that many of her former friends have become involved with in the last couple of years. What might this, if anything, have to do with Patrick's attack?
The more she investigates the crime, and is forced to deal with what happened to her, Cat begins to heal and come back to her former self. Myracle brings some great ideas up for discussion throughout this story. Cat learns that none of us are as good on the outside as we believe we are on th inside. That you cannot compare your inside self to the outside you see of others. She also learns that usually we lash out at that in others that we dislike most within ourselves. And from Mama Sweetie she learns that when someone curses or yells insults at you, they are often trying to shake loose a bad feeling they have about themselve and pass it onto you.
While Cat does mention the media's interest in the crime a couple of times, I do think Ms. Myracle could have done more to show the affect a media frenzy would have had on the people of a small town like Black Creek. Throughout the story the setting continued to feel very isolated, which we know would not be possible in todays world. And I found the character of college student Jason Connor to be unecessary. It seemed an obvious ploy to create a possible romantic interest for Cat. He did nothing to help the story evolve, and was even left out of the climatic conclusion because he had no place in This story.
That being said, I believe this is a great story with a lot in it for the reader to chew on. I will suggest this book to anyone looking for a good, enjoyable, read that gives the reader something to take away from the experienc

Sue_G

More than 1 year ago

Shine is my first Lauren Myracle novel, and I was very impressed. Cat lives in Black Creek, North Carolina; a place where secrets are kept close and the town hierarchy determines how your family is treated. Cat's friend Patrick is found beaten at the local gas station with gay slurs written across his chest. Patrick is in a coma, and Cat determines to find out who attacked him, and why.
Cat's journey away from the safe, withdrawn place she had lived in for the past few years is pretty amazing. She takes her fear and turns it into anger, both at herself and at a town that is doing it's best to keep Patrick's attack unsolved. As Cat asks questions of her friends, she discovers they all have secret addictions and desires that she never saw on the outside because she thought the outside appearance of a person was the same as the inside. I think this is something we all learn as we grown into adulthood; people we thought we knew can surprise us sometimes with who they really are--and sometimes they can disappoint us, too.
I enjoyed this book very much. I think the topic is very relevant for today's world, and Cat's acceptance of her shortcomings, and her ability to see her friends for who they are, rather than what she sees on the outside, is very appealing. This book will definitely start a conversation amongst friends. A must read!

hellojana

More than 1 year ago

Lauren Myracle has grown up since the Internet Girls series. Shine is a book that will stay with you long after you finish the last page. Cat's former best friend Patrick becomes a victim of a hate crime in their poor, Carolina mountain town. While he is in a coma, Cat investigates the crime since she knows the local sheriff will do little to solve the case. During her investigation Cat must face her own past demons as well as those of the town. Ultimately she not only discovers what happened to Patrick but she manages to find herself.
Myracle treats the subject matter with great sensitivity including sexual abuse, drug addiction and the hate crime itself. Her characters, while many of them flawed, are extremely likable and heartbreaking. Myracle maintains a high level of suspense throughout the novel that will make you race through the last pages.

aaltami44

More than 1 year ago

This book is amazing. It is so good that it should be made into a movie. When it was over I cried because I loved that book so much. It only took my about a day to read it.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

An engaging story from beginning to end. I could not put this book down. It is beautifully written and is definitely a must-read.

Honesttoblog42

More than 1 year ago

As a teenager who LOVES to read, it's hard for me to find a young adult book that fits my taste. However, Shine was such a good book that I finished the day I bought it. It has the mystery element that I enjoy (My favorite authors are Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and it is captivating and leaves you guessing til the end. Most young adult books either have some sort of romance with some kind of supernatural being or a love triangle that's horribly cliche. But Shine addresses real issues that young teenagers face, and allows you to connect with the characters in a way the most teen books can't. I recommend this book to anyone, young, old, teen, man, woman, whoever. It is an excellent book.

ashley-berge

More than 1 year ago

Loved it. Not for anyone under 17 I would say, some Graphic content, not much but nothing I would want my kids to read. Little to do with the fact that it was a hate crime, more to do with the journey of tracking down the person who did the crime with a intertwining story on the main character who is doing the tracking because it is her best friend who got hurt. Worth a read.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Really a good read

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I am ussually not into teen fiction, however this book changed my views on everything. It had me hooked from the first page. After I read it then raved to everyone about it, they all wanted to read it- even my english teacher. The story will make you fall in love with the charecters and they'll haunt you- in a good way- even after finishing the book. Everyone can learn things from the book such as forgiveness, love, and having a true friend. It will keep you guessing untill the very end and have you in tears many times. I cannot describe how much this book means to me but I can tell you, you will never regret reading it.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

This is not something I would normally read but it kept me interested till the end. I would recommend this book.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I got this because it seemed to be an Appalachian noir, like Winter's Bone. Once I began did I realize Myracle is a YA author. The book has to go through some teen character cliches, most notably an out-of-place romance with a character whose opening act is so dispicible that he spends the rest of the novel trying to redeem himself. He never does.
What we end up with is something tamer than Winter's Bone. Young Adult Justified. Myracle tackles mature themes but can't quite commit to the darkness. That said, if you want a quick whodunit with a spunky lead and an LGBT angle, I recommend Shine.

Wailuasunset

More than 1 year ago

Simply the best book i have ever read.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I want to start off saying i finished this book in 5 hours. This book really surprised me with all the twist and turns it absolutly keeps you wanting more and you wont want to put it down! I recommend this to anyone who wants to read a book that could easily be realistic!

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I really recommend this book. Surprisingly satisfying.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Frighteningly honest with just enough Southern spice to keep it warm and endearingly fresh

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I loved this book and finished it in a couple of days. It wasnt short, i just spent all free time to read it. Myracle has done it again. I love love love Shine and all her other books. I would recomend it to a young adult or older due to its cussing.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

This book is for a young reader but I am not a young reader and I really enjoyed the book. It was suspensful and when I had to put it down to do something, I could not wait to pick it up again.

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